Some other oddities in the tournament “rules” revealed yesterday: In the unlikely event of a draw, the promotion will call upon a fourth judge to break the tie. That’s cool, because draws suck. It’s also shitty, because the “fourth judge” will reportedly be appointed by Strikeforce, not an athletic commission and therefore stands to be even less trustworthy than the blind simpletons who normally score MMA fights. Also, in the very likely event that someone can’t continue in the tournament due to injury (or some other reason) a five-person “tournament committee” comprised of Strikeforce officials will handpick a replacement. If you think this concept is obviously rife with major conflicts of interests, well, you’re right. Don’t worry though, it will all sound very official. Kind of like in the ’80s when “Jack Tunney” used to be the “president” of the WWF.

Anyway, after the jump, some meditations on how all the things we told you in the above two paragraphs could potentially make this tournament go all fubar. We have questions, people. Tons of questions.

(Remember when Sergei Kharitonov sent Alistair Overeem‘s lifeless body through the ropes at K-1 Hero’s 10? No? Then you really need to watch these videos…)

In our excitement for Strikeforce’s potentially insane heavyweight tournament, one point seems to be getting lost in the narrative — namely, that these guys have already fought each other many, many times before. Five of the eight competitors (Werdum, Arlovski, Overeem, Emelianenko, Rogers) have previously faced at least three other fighters in the tournament field. Fabricio Werdum has actually fought everyone except Brett Rogers and Josh Barnett, and only Barnett himself has managed to go his entire career without bumping up against anybody else in this year’s bracket.

All told, there’s eleven twelve fights worth of shared history among the Strikeforce HWGP competitors, dating back over five years. To help you study for the quarterfinals next month, we’ve posted them all below in chronological order…

UPDATE: We originally forgot to include Fabricio Werdum’s decision win over Antonio Silva. So actually, there have been 12 previous meetings, not 11. The video has now been added.

According to "The Reem," even he was a bit taken aback by the San Jose, California-based promotion’s decision to eliminate three heavily-anticipated potential final round match-ups so early in the tournament, but he says that it’s not his job to question the decision of his employer and that he’ll fight whomever Strikeforce puts in front of him.

"I have been looking for a big fight for more than a year now. Tournament or no tournament, Werdum was going to be my first fight in Strikeforce [in 2011]. All the fighters in that tournament are good, so there are no easy fights," he explained to MMAJunkie. "I’m a little surprised [that our bracket has myself, Fedor and Fabricio in it], and I don’t know why this bracket is designed this way, but my job is to fight. I’m not picking opponents, so if that’s the way they made the bracket, so be it."

The answers (in order) are: Good, not so good, Kharitonov and Barnett. Though he is fully recovered from the elbow he jacked up while shocking the world in defeating Fedor Emelianenko last June, Werdum doesn’t sound particularly psyched about his upcoming date with Overeem. Weirdly, the fact that he’s reportedly getting a shot at the Strikeforce heavyweight belt in the first round of the GP doesn’t even come up. He does however indicate that he’s looking forward to a second meeting with Fedor in the semis, which he casually mentions could be on pay-per-view. Werdum says he’s been “working on his bang” to get ready for The Reem but still plans on taking the bout to the mat, where he’ll use his conditioning and “smartness” to get the victory.

(Somehow we see this tournament going down before Strikeforce’s HW GP.)

With the current buzz surrounding the recently announced Strikeforce 2011 heavyweight grand prix, we figured we’d take a look at what kind of tournament the UFC could put on if they were so inclined.Contrary to popular opinion, the calibre of the UFC’s HW GP would be just as good, if not better than Strikeforce’s. The only noticeable difference is that there really wouldn’t be any mismatches in Zuffa’s heavyweightpalooza.

Even if Joe Silva decided not to put the matches together that we hypothesized in order to save some of the more anticipated pairings for the sem-final and final rounds, shuffling the card around would not cause a great disparity in the calibre of opponents.

Strikeforce has just released the bracket for their clusterfuctacular heavyweight tournament, which should clear up some of the conflictingreports about who’s fighting who. What it doesn’t specify is when these fights are taking place. We know that Emelianenko vs. Silva and Arlovski vs. Kharitonov are both happening February 12th in New Jersey. Overeem/Werdum and Barnett/Rogers are tentatively slated to go down in April, exact date and location TBA. And the semi-finals and finals? Your guess is as good as ours, bro. With a little bit of luck, this entire dirty business will be settled by the time President Trump takes office.

(Personally, I think that getting all these guys together for a single-night tournament is the only way you can insure that the semi-finals and finals will actually take place, but we’re trying to stay positive here. For what it’s worth, Scott Coker is adamant that Josh Barnett’s licensing issues will not bar him from competing in the GP.)

According to a report by MMAFighting.com, "The Last Emperor" has signed a contract extension with the San Jose-based organization that will see the Russian fighter compete in the planned 2011 heavyweight tournament. Although terms of the agreement were not released, as per Strikeforce policy, the report indicates that sources close to the situation said that the deal is for four fights. The new deal will commence with a February 12 first round tournament bout with Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva in New Jersey.

The question is whether or not it’s too little too late for Strikeforce to put together the most anticipated tilt in its promotional history between Emelianenko and Overeem.

I never thought I’d ever speak out against a grand prix tournament, but because the proposed Strikeforce heavyweight tournament has so many question marks surrounding it, I’m almost hoping it doesn’t happen.

When Scott Coker mentioned earlier this year that Strikeforce was either going to piss or get off the pot when teasing its fans with heavyweight fights that never seem to come to fruition because of those crazy Russians for whatever reason, I thought he meant it.

What Sco-Co should have said was, "We’ll likely milk the current roster for whatever we can and if we can make the fights fans want to see, then we will, but we likely won’t."

According to Tatame, the California-based promotion is planning on stretching the tournament over three events and will likely anchor Strikeforce’s foray into pay-per-view TV — a move necessitated by the fact that it’s unlikely that CBS will be having them back on network TV in 2011 and the costs of greasing the pockets of M-1 Global for each Fedor-featured event are likely more than most Russians make in their lives.